This is one of the saddest, most harrowing, horrifying books I've ever read. Despite an occasionally dragging plot, I read it in 24 hours and it made This is one of the saddest, most harrowing, horrifying books I've ever read. Despite an occasionally dragging plot, I read it in 24 hours and it made me cry. And, incidentally, it was absolutely the wrong book to read during Storm Frank. The entire house shook for most of it, and I've been cold for 24 hours....more
Individual reviews are below, but this is an incredibly strong and enjoyable collection. The best thing about it is the individual flavour that even sIndividual reviews are below, but this is an incredibly strong and enjoyable collection. The best thing about it is the individual flavour that even stories I panned - like Paige's The Dark... - or were underwhelmed by - Jay Kristoff's Sleepless - have their own distinct atmosphere. Scrolling through the list, I can remember every story vividly, and so I think it richly deserves the solid 4 stars overall.
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THE BIRDS OF AZALEA STREET by Nova Ren Suma 4.5 stars
i know I should love Nova Ren Suma. She writes the kind of books that I know should be exactly calibrated to my tastes - eerie, creepy, female-driven, suspense novels. Yet, despite my appreciation of all things sisterly and sinister, we've never quite agreed on what constitutes plot, as I personally don't think atmosphere is enough to sustain a novel. Nevertheless, this has forced me to concede quite how masterfully talented she is. Since I finished it twenty minutes ago, I have been plagued by delicious shivers ever since. It's an ominous and incredibly well-written tale about three girls against a predatory neighbour. The mounting sense of dread has stayed with me.
I had to deduct a half-star because I personally found the ending underwhelming, simultaneously under-explained but too on-the-nose. It was done in the best horror movie tradition, but even so, as Suma has such a masterful way with imagery and dialogue, something more definitive and original would've gone across better with me, but this is personal, and shouldn't detract from how chilling and genuinely creepy this short was. To illustrate, I'll leave you with a couple of my favourite lines:
Paisley told us she could sense the hunger coming off him, like she was plump and roasting and he hadn't eaten for a week.
It was the saddest thing I've seen all year, even worse than the time Miranda from school showed us her suicide notes and asked us to pick the best-written one so she could impress her dad.
IN A FOREST, DARK AND DEEP by Carrie Ryan 2.5 stars
When I read before that this was based on Alice in Wonderland, I steeled myself. There are so many variations on Alice that I seriously doubted the need for another, especially when there are so many other things that could've inspired a story; did we really need a version of something which is essentially middle-grade horror? Obviously Ryan's writing suffered in comparison to the amazing Nova Ren Suma, but it was decent enough, with some genuine scares and jolts, and some creepy images. However, the structure was just far too disjointed. I felt like I was never 'getting' it, but I also couldn't really be bothered to flip back and clarify anything. There was also a large cast and fairly complicated story for such a short piece, but none of them ever grabbed or interested me; they felt flat and dull.
EMMELINE by Cat Winters 2 stars
Not really scary like the first and second, more sad and a little unsettling than really disturbing. It's hard to mess up World War creepfests, as the horror pretty much writes itself, but Winters is clearly a real pro: there's Lillian Gish, burning magazines, and a lot of nice period details, including a pitch-perfect mid-century tone of voice from both Emmeline and the mysterious American soldier who appears in her bombed-out home. However, the story isn't really distinctive and, in contrast to Carrie Ryan's story, it seems a little too long for the idea as is. Still, it gets major props for not ending as I was sure it would, but I can't really rate it any higher because, unlike Nova Ren Suma's, it just sort of fell off my radar after I finished it. It felt like a throwback, and not always in a good way - so built on other aesthetics that it didn't feel like there was an individual voice in there.
VERSE CHORUS VERSE by Leigh Bardugo 5 stars
FUCK. This is what I'm talking about. It's not without its problems, as a story - with the particular use of one very overused plot point, please no more - but what I loved the most about it was that, after all my bitching and moaning about how ambiguity felt like a cop-out, here was a story that pitches its own ambiguity exactly right. I didn't quite "get" it, but there was so much here to chew on and think about. Also, there was something so crystallising about what I love in YA horror about how Bardugo pitched the setting - a rehab joint where a teen singer, struggling with addiction, is forced to go, especially in the notion of being both on your own and terrifyingly at the mercy of other people. I felt like Bardugo's little talking doll, how I shivered at the nurse's teeth, or Louise assuring Jaycee that "no-one gets over that fence," among many other moments. It's terrifying, but with sympathetic, believable, and incredibly interesting characters at its centre, and so many interesting points swirling around its premise to unpick.
I particularly loved the mother-daughter relationship, even though I have no idea where it went on that last page. I can only say that I loved it nonetheless. "In that minute, Kara had hated Jaycee. She'd understood that she would always be standing in that parking lot. No matter how many tickets they sold, or how many charities they gave to, they'd always be trash."
HIDE AND SEEK by Megan Shepard 4.5 stars
What this one lacks in character development, it makes up for threefold in visceral thrills and excitement. I'm not sure if I would call this horror - it certainly draws on ideas and scenes we would think of as being horror, it has a particular novel spin on fear - I was never really afraid when Annie raced through her North Carolina town looking for a way to cheat death, but I was afraid for her, of the consequences if she failed, because I desperately didn't want that to happen. The twist involving her friend, Suze, and the final challenge made me nearly yelp out a "Hail Mary" for brave Annie at the near end of her journey. I genuinely raced to the end, gasping for breath and, in a genre that always seems so intent on bleakness and misery, it was simply delightful, and surprisingly emotional, to read one that tacitly acknowledges the resilience, bravery, and strength of spirits both human and inhuman. "Death is not a person. Death cannot be reasoned with. As life, as in death, nothing is fair."
THE DARK, THE SCARY PARTS AND ALL by Danielle Page 1.5 stars
This, strangely, was the one I was most anticipating, as my favourite horror film of all time is Rosemary's Baby, one of the very few film adaptations that are better than the books. The best part of this novel is the ingenious title. Other than that - seriously, I am BAFFLED. To call this an archetypal YA romance, especially circa 2010-2011, would be almost a joke because it's so much like every single trope from paranormal romance I have ever read, almost to parodic levels. I actually spent most of the story hoping that it would turn out to be some great self-aware joke, that Marnie had read too many Twilight knockoffs and thus felt compelled to brag about how much better she was than all the other stereotypical mean girls because she was the cleverest girl in class, compare her half-baked romance with the unbelievably handsome, chivalrous rich guy to Heathcliff (of course!), and he was also fulfilling her tweeny fantasies when he told her that she wasn't like other girls because she read books (oh my god!) except he was - gasp! - the Devil. If that's what Paige was going for, the other shoe never dropped.
It remained nonsensical. What could've been an atmospheric and intensely creepy YA horror about a girl tapping into the Devil within, intermingled with some Satanic kissing - don't judge me, okay - stayed so silly and stupid that I rolled my eyes continuously throughout it. Page's writing isn't bad so I kept desperately hoping she would elevate it, but nothing ever did. The mean girls are completely ripped from, well, Mean Girls, complete with some rather half-assed chanting and stupid nicknames. Whenever she mentioned Damian Thorne's special eyes, or his sense of intense empathy - hey, for the Devil's only son, he isn't all bad - I somewhere between shuddered and cringed, but not in the horror way. The unravelling of the plot was absurd at best, with absolutely no creep or surprise factor; it felt like the most routine plodding through what could've been an incredibly creepy plot, all the set pieces were moronic. I have never seen pentagrams or self-inflicted suicide look dumber. This short was so unoriginal that they literally had to borrow mutilated Barbie dolls from another murderous couple, Heathers.
There was one really good line, though: "But pretty wasn't always symmetry and flawless skin. Pretty was sometimes a verb. And Evelyn prettied better than anyone."
THE FLICKER, THE FINGERS, THE BEAT, THE SIGH by April Genevieve Tucholke 3.5 stars
Highly unoriginal and really quite sparse, I expected more from this one, simply because there's not much of a plot. Of all the others that have been mostly 'inspired' by their "sources," this one pretty much just takes the same idea - from "I Know What You Did Last Summer" - and repeats it, with a little bit of the climax of "Carrie" - the other inspiration, which gets bizarrely name checked in the beginning, in an unrelated incident - thrown in. It's pretty good, and has some truly creepy moments, especially during the "what happened next" epilogue but this, again, felt much shorter than some of the others, as it was basically one not-very-fresh idea at the centre. Still, it's a good piece of B-movie fun, and we must that April Genevieve Tucholke, our queen, for making this collection possible. Eerie and with a certain type of nice bluntness, if uninspired.
FAT GIRL WITH A KNIFE by Jonathan Maberry 3 stars
This one felt like the classic 3-star read. While the vast majority of these little stories I've rated in the region of 2-3 stars were more like bumpy experiences - some great moments, some less stellar moments - this is one of those that just feels straight-up 3 stars. It potters along at a perfectly fine pace: starting tense and suspenseful, before finally wrapping up in a satisfactory, if predictable, manner. Dahlia is an interesting character, but I must note something that slightly annoyed me about this story and the last. In both, it felt like the "stimulus" had been somewhat misused. Yes, I know, these authors owe me nothing but, in contrast to, say, the Hitchcock mashup that Nova Ren Suma presented first, I found it not really stretching the phenomenal thing connecting these stories: the genius idea of using different areas of horror literature as inspiration for short stories of all kinds, when it felt like Maberry, obviously a zombie fanatic judging by his other books, basically picked the two stimuli he knew best (Zombieland and Night of the Living Dead), and made a short story out of it. That's fine, but it lacked the truly creative punch of many of these tales.
With all that said, there's a reason why the idea of the zombie apocalypse in a high school is so absolutely creepy and terrifying, and Maberry taps into that well. Although I loved the very last scene, I did find it somewhat contrary in comparison to what we know about Dahlia. Still: "Yeah. She was smiling as she said that." Shivers ran down my spine.
SLEEPLESS by Jay Kristoff 3.5 stars
When I realised this was a horror short about online relationships, I rubbed my hands together in glee (typo'd as flee the first time, that sounds about right for a horror collection). Speaking from personal experience, there's something so claustrophobic, important, and innately mysterious about online relationships that I couldn't wait to see Kristoff use. When I heard that there were several mind-boggling twists, I got even more excited. HOWEVER - I would seriously advise anyone who reads on Kindle not to click forwards on this story in particular. You will get the first source inspiration for this pretty easily, as it's one of those pop-culture must-knows that have been referenced and remade all over the place, but the second area of source inspiration is basically a total spoiler. I alternated between clicking and waiting till the end to find out, and I wish I'd waited for this one.
So, yeah, I got the twist, but luckily there is another - which, sadly, I also got, thanks to a massive hint that Krisotff drops early and pretty heavily. Though it does rip off the big twist from the big film it's based on, Kristoff livens things up with multiple twists, all of which, to his credit, fit together seamlessly but this is a story that relies, sadly, on its surprise value for the enjoyment factor. Once I knew everything, it felt flatter and dumber, like I was just waiting to get there. Also, one of the twists bothered me because I felt like it took me out of the premise of the anthology, and what it was "supposed" to be - that's as clear as I can be without plot spoilers. Don't get me wrong, it's a well-written and atmospheric short story, and I spent most of the time hoping I was wrong about it, but I wasn't. Also, do kids still talk in the most abbreviated slang? I get they're supposed to be young, but it hurt my eyes and, from my brief frequenting of teen-dominated web spaces, like tumblr, kids now only abbreviate very infrequently, preferring full sentences. There was quite a lot of it and it was annoying and even, dare I say, unrealistic.
"Sometimes I wonder if the right girl is out there. Sometimes I wonder if Momma isn't right about all of them."
M by Stephen Bachmann 2.5 stars
Well, that was...strange. I definitely didn't think it was horror, to be honest. It seemed to be essentially an Agatha Christie mystery, not that there's anything wrong with that. There was the potential for creepiness and sometimes there was, such as Misha marking the maybe-murderer with ink, but, given it was in third-person, it seemed almost too focused on Misha. I liked the relationship that developed between Misha and Kerstin, the servant girl who helped her in her expedition but, for such a short story, too much of it felt like it was focused on Misha sitting down not doing very much, for its intensely abbreviated length. There were creepy moments, especially with the children, but much of it felt random and strange. Naturally, for a densely-populated short where only two characters really lead, the "revelation" meant it so I couldn't care less, as I'm pretty sure we never saw the doer before. Bachmann has a great eye for dialogue, though, and I did enjoy this one - I think it mostly threw me off balance because it just didn't seem like a horror story. Also, as the much more common way to spell the servant's name is Kirsten here in England, where the book is set, it kept giving me cross-eyes looking at it.
"That sounded nice. Being a secret. 'It's not like that at all,' Misha said. 'It's miserable here.'
'Isn't it everywhere,' Kerstin said matter-of-factly.
THE GIRL WITHOUT A FACE by Marie Lu 4.5 stars
I'm glad I waited to review this one. I actually read it almost a week ago, but kept starting the review and not being happy with it. Clearly something wanted me to just wait. I was split between a fairly underwhelmed 3-3.5 stars, as I'd been so hyped for this and found it, well, rather mediocre in terms of plotting. It was nicely written, but the elements just felt too archetypal. It didn't help that this one, like the aforementioned short, also featured a Harvard-admitted character attempting to cover up a crime they'd committed. That's not even factoring in the two "source" materials, neither of which I've seen. I've never read anything by Lu because her usual stuff (dystopian/fantasy about chosen ones etc) are very much not my thing, but this one came to me quite hyped, and I hoped for something a little, well, fresher.
Aided by a couple of claustrophobic closet dreams, I reread this one not once but twice, and realised what kept me thinking. While I deduct a half-star for failing to make me shiver and wonder like the eerie newness of Leigh Bardugo's teen rehab did, or gasp and race like Megan Shepherd's Hide and Seek (i.e. the enjoyment factor of feeling like you're encountering originality or something truly new), it actually doesn't really matter how original a short story is, because it's just freaking good. Lu conjured up the sense of oppression in private school student Richard's everyday life as he begins to realise that someone is watching him from the closet in his new house, and made me develop very complicated feelings towards Richard even in a very short and quite elusive short: wanting him to get away from the ghost's power while not being sure if he really deserved it. The ending is duly haunting and creepy.
She looked different somehow. Did she always have light hair? Why did Richard remember that she was supposed to be a brunette?
THE GIRL WHO DREAMED OF SNOW by McCormick Templeman 3 stars
The highest rating I can give to a story I had to skim. This one has serious potential - the idea is creepy and the setting is unique and gave me the appropriate chilly feeling, both metaphorically and literally, because it's set somewhere very cold. The writing is good and, when Templeman is on, this story is really on. However, it felt, like Carrie Ryan's story from earlier in the collection, needlessly complicated and convoluted. I will admit that I almost felt cross-eyed from all the changes of perspective that just seemed to muddy a fairly simple basic idea. I wanted to love it and got close a couple of times, as this story throws in some of my favourite things - a vivid setting and human sacrifice (to clarify: I don't love human sacrifice, but feeling compelled to do it in a horror story is one of my favourite creepy tropes). The ending is pitch perfect, and there are serious scenes which rival to be the best in the collection, but the overall feel of the story is one of too long and too confusing, not helped by the fact that it just didn't grab me. Sorry.
"All he saw was his daughter's smile. All he saw was the gift of salvation, born of the sacred dream of snow."
STITCHES by A.G. Howard 4 stars
AHHHH!!! Arguably the most traditionally scary story in the collection, this is so gory, bloody, and take-no-prisoners that I read it wincing. Honestly. I flinched every time I turned the page in my Kindle, worrying what was going to come next. Sad though it is, that great recommendation is also what made me dock it a half-star. It's an inspired short story, with real depth behind it, but it's also so nasty and unrestrained that I could not enjoy it at all. I'm actually trying to push this idea back into the recesses of my mind and forget about it, that's how much the repeated descriptions of mutilations and amputations freaked me out. Good, but only for certain tastes.
"Your family is at peace now. I hope at last we can have all the pieces we deserve."
ON THE I-5 by Kendare Blake 2 stars
Sorry. This one is just fine to me, not helped by being last in the collection. It was just a little too quiet and tropey to really make its mark, and knowing that Blake has a serious horror background, I had high expectations. Despite the GR character limit, I'm still disappointed I don't have more to say about this one....more
This book is the very definition of a grower, which is why I'm actually editing my review, something I try to avoid because I believe my revi4.5 stars
This book is the very definition of a grower, which is why I'm actually editing my review, something I try to avoid because I believe my reviews should, as far as possible, try to represent my thoughts on the book once I'd finished it, at the point of reading. But this book...damn. This book has slain me and, although it's not necessarily one of those books that you close with a 'wow,' it's haunted me consistently since I finished it. I find myself thinking about it at random times during the day or night, desperate to know how the ending is going to play out. I think I can mostly attribute this to Kavanagh's phenomenal moulding of tone. This book mingles the tragic and the comic better than any novel I've ever read, managing to tear out your heart with small, un-showy scenes, such as Yasmin watching Alice's parents on television, or the big moments where Yamsin relives her father's death, with Yasmin's hilarious observations about her weight, the teen world, her family. It is at times horrifyingly disturbing, haunting, and complex. I still can't quite give this an unquestioning 5 stars because I would still have liked a little more development of the Man - Sam - that Yasmin sees watching the target of her obsession, Alice. But still:
(Don't click this spoiler. It's a proper spoiler, one of the last lines in the book, but I have to write it down because I've been swirling it around in my head for weeks ago.)
(view spoiler)[
I thought about Alice's flower, safe in the pocket of my jeans, and wondered if we'd ever talk about her - if I'd ever tell you how much I loved her. Still love her, although now I suppose it's just the memory of her.(hide spoiler)]
I mean, ouch. This is the best kind of disturbing, haunting mind screw - the kind that is so well-developed, so plausible, and so quietly shocking that it just burrows right under your skin, like a nightmare. It's not perfect, and part of me wishes I hadn't written this so you could go in as blind as I was, and be as surprised as I was - still am - but I had to. Sorry.
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A highly compelling and addictive YA contemporary novel. This is my first "rushing to get to the end" read of 2015 (sadly), and it was my first one-sitting read in I don't know how long. Seriously - I can't remember how long it's been since I stayed up till 3 solely to read one novel, but this did it for me. It's true that this is one of those books - in part due to its very simple, taut plot, which nevertheless strung me along effectively and had me practically gasping to know how it was going to end - that it's better not to go into knowing too much.
Yasmin is a phenomenally detailed character - exactly the right amount of pitiful, despicable, yet there is something about her - perhaps I'm just far too much of a sap as lonely characters go. Her grief over her father's death and sense of never belonging in her 'new' family is deeply believable and well-drawn. I spent many of the early pages biting my nails for her, wishing she wouldn't be so weird so she could develop some real friends, and my stomach dropped one too many times even though she was digging herself into a hole with her own odd and obsessive behaviour.
She is also a diverse character - being significantly obese and half-Turkish, though I was a little put off by some of her verbal quirks, like the frequency with which she described her dietician's "Indian accent." It seemed to appear at least 2-3 times every single time she mentioned him. Probably meant to be a faucet of her bighly obsessive personality, but it grew wearing and slightly off-putting. Only a tiny thing, though.
This is also a great "realistic" contemporary. Obviously contemporary, by its very nature, is realistic - but with the amount of time Yasmin spent in class, what a big part school played in her life, and how well-plotted it seemed to be - her movement from family to school, her few hobbies which she circles between in the couple of weeks that the novel encompasses - this felt like one of the few YA novels I've ever read which could take place in the real world as it is. Just another small nitpick, though I don't know enough to say for sure: Yasmin is only fifteen. Yet, for most of her dealings with the police during the novel, she seemed to be perfectly content to be interviewed alone. I could understand it when she was at school but it seemed highly unlikely that she would be left alone during the later police interviews, though I could swear there are a couple where her mum isn't present (and a couple when she is). I didn't think minors could be interviewed by police alone, unless there was a solicitor present that Kavanagh didn't mention because it wasn't important.
To get to my gripes about the novel, I have to be slightly more spoiler-happy so, yeah, if you haven't read this but a dark YA contemporary about not one, but two, obsessive stalkers sounds like your jam, I recommend picking up this one without reading any further, though I'll try not to go into any specific plot details in order not to ruin this one for you.
The "mystery" is well-plotted but, ultimately, the intense speed of this novel lets it down. It feels like the big thing that happens to Alice happens far too early; there's simply not enough development for me, of any of the characters except Yasmin. Yasmin is superbly drawn and I kept waiting for Kavanagh to get into depth about the man with whom Yasmin becomes obsessed because she believes he is stalking Alice. It would be different if he was totally bland and banal, but I felt there was a deep sense of something more intriguing about him than Kavanagh ever let show. I think it also would've made the relationship between him and Yasmin seem more believable, as, although Yasmin is meant to be an obsessive stalker who will latch onto any sign of affection or interest because she's so lonely, it doesn't make for all that interesting reading when she seems to just be chasing someone with no real personality.
There was a great deal of potential and mystery - his mother's death, his strange move, the mystery of Amelia Bell - but none of it came to anything, which is not even hinted at until the very end and, even then, we don't find out anything about him. If it felt that we or Yasmin had even slightly scratched the surface of him, I think I would've found this novel more satisfying - if we had something to go on or get our teeth into rather than Yasmin's disproportionate level of interest. This is particularly disappointing as Kavanagh can tease an extraordinary amount of tension out of the smallest details in this novel - who is Mrs. E Caldwall? What will happen when Yasmin finally finds his house? - that it felt especially anticlimactic that she chose to leave the mysterious Sam a complete blank slate. It wasn't his mysteriousness I minded - in fact, it made for a deeply tense and thrilling reading experience - but rather the lack of development. I felt this book could've had an extra 50 pages and been even better than it was, which is rare for me and an incredible compliment to Kavanagh, as I have a pretty short attention span.
As a result the plot developments that happen seem a little too rushed or, well, not thought out enough sometimes. Yasmin's allegiance seems to shift too quickly and incomprehensibly. I was disappointed at the lack of presence Alice seemed to have in her mind, as I really thought this could've built to a classic of a mystery. Especially with that creepy knockout of an ending - I can honestly say this is one of the few YA contemporary books about which I would completely love, and devour, a sequel.
Even with my reservations, though, I can say that Kavanagh is a great new talent on the YA scene. More, please. ...more
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